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Theme Sneak Peek: LeanBiz

Today I am pleased to give everyone a sneak peek at our upcoming theme LeanBiz. After the Theme Vote results revealed a need for more Business Themes, we kept our promise and started working on just that. LeanBiz will be a simple and professional theme that strips away as much unneeded information as possible. The result is a clean homepage with a clear call to action that is sure to keep your visitors clicking.

I hope that you like what you see! We have also been hard at work this month on a ton of back-end/ePanel updates for all themes. These updates should be ready soon, so stay tuned for more info later this week.

By Nick Roach

I am the founder and lead designer at Elegant Themes. When I'm not hard at work on new themes, I enjoy writing an article or two on our blog!

The similarity in style in the last few designs comes from the CSS control panel that allows you to choose your own BG color and texture. I will remove this in future designs to help free up different possibilities.

Although admittedly some of the design layouts may become repetitive, what it does mean is it becomes much easier to find our way around new themes and makes customising really easy. Saving time and making things efficient is one of the major appeals of trying to run a theme business and is one of the reasons my company is using Elegant Themes over other websites, such as Woo Themes for example.

If you can find some magical way of mixing up layouts and styles but making the ePanel and layout just as easy to use and modify, that will literally be heaven for my team and business.

No reason for the control panel removal! As Cj mentions the resolution is to change the settings in css panel to get the desired/different look cause the defaults are the same. Thats the whole point of the control panel the variety! so shouldn’t really use same default background at first place with each theme release should use a different default pattern and font from control panel. Control panel wasn’t the problem.

The Background style comes from the CSS control panel that allows you to choose any BG color or pattern, or even upload your own BG image. It has been suggested below that this control panel is hurting the themes by making them look similar, so I will be removing this control panel in future designs to help break things up. Thanks for the suggestion.

I don’t mind the CSS options options to change the background images and textures at all. You won’t always be able to please everybody. Why? Because, everyone will always have opinions. Much like in photography…take a roll of film but you’ll probably only find one or 2 photos you will use out of 100.
In anycase, I would really love to see a template that expands the ability to use mixed media a little more. In my case, I’ve been using the e-vid theme because I work in video production. The theme is attractive, but perhaps a fresh one is on order? Or perhaps the ability to move boxes like in Joomla? Or is that more a platform thing and not a wordpress design thing?

Nick I dont think you are understanding what these people are saying, and at first I didnt understand what these people were complaining about because you are the mind behind the designs and they cannot develop these themes so they should just be thankful that you can. However, what IS being said, is that you reuse the same LAYOUT, for most of your themes. you never change up the style. FORGET about CSS changes here that has nothing to do with how the information is displayed on the front page. whatever colors these people want are fine, but i think they are upset about the lack of creativity in the layout aspect of the theme

All of our themes are made by the same designer and will undoubtedly share a similar style. If this isn’t what you are looking for then I would recommend exploring some other vendors. There are many WordPress designers our there with different styles that may better suite you.

I don’t agree with that Monica. Nick and the team do a great job. The support service is excellent. He is absolutely right to direct people to another path. The business has to have it’s own vision and Nick has a vision for his business that he thinks is best for his customers. If few people are not happy with that well unfortunately you can’t please everyone as much as you would want to.

I am just being honest. I think it’s important to choose a style that works for you, and you should look for a designer that suits the vision you have for your business. There is no one style that will please everyone, which is part of the beauty of design.

Nick, I can’t wait for this new layout. Every project I work on, you seem to be one step ahead. I needed a rating webst, boom InReview came out perfect. This one will no doubt help me out as well, love the design.

If I read your home page correctly you said “My job is to respect each customer by providing attractive and userfriendly WordPress templates that will help you achieve your online goals.” As a designer you should know that everyone will have an opinion. You should be able to set aside your personal feelings and approach the client in a professional manner. Telling the client to go piss off is not really professional.

You are also in this stage of popularity mainly because of clients like us who vote for your work and pay you yearly. So you might want to take that into consideration when you comment in the future.

Directing someone who loves your style to another designer seems a bit harsh in this instance.

Above, someone said “Nick is doing what he thinks is best for his customers.” The thing is, what’s more powerful… doing what you think is best for your customers – or simply allowing your customers to tell you what they want most?

I think a middle ground. Taking a stance of “Deal with it or leave” is a bit rigid. On the other hand, you need some rigidity or you won’t have a presence in your design.

Anyway, I think this is the voice of many of your customers, spoken clearly and in a few steps:

1. We love your aesthetic & style
2. The last 4-5 themes are too similar in terms of layout, fonts, backgrounds, etc.
3. We want the variety back that was very prevalent up to this point.

You say that the themes are similar in fonts, color, and BG. But that’s because they all use the CSS control panel that allows you to choose any font, any color and any BG. That’s the point of the control panel, to allow for this variation. You can even upload your own BG image or pattern in ePanel.

It seems like in this case, this variation (as it exists in each design) is being confused for similarity. But the hole point of the control panel is to allow for additional customization.

I will remove the control panel in the next few designs, but will undoubtedly get complaints about that as well. We’ll see how it goes, thanks for the suggestion.

Please Nick do not remove the css panel! This is one of the hottest last addition of your themes! I love to be able to choose any font, any BG and any color with the simplicity that this panel offers! The users of ET are getting more and more and we need the easy way to differentiate our projects. Keep it and let users to choose if they want to use it or not.

People like 1988 and a whole bunch of others, miss the point. EVERYTHING IS CUSTOMIZABLE! BG, font, colors,…. everything. Instead of understanding that, you all get pissy with Nick when he tries to explain that. This is without a doubt the best price for WP themes in the business. You spend $39, then turn around and use his design and features to sell a site for $2000-$3000. Are you mental? If you don’t like the themes, keep searching for other designers and spend another $39 with someone else you cheap losers.

I think people have voiced issues more about the layout not so much the colours, etc.

I think the panel is great as it facilitates a smart way to adjust fonts, colours, etc.

I don’t like that some people might appear rude, but that’s business life. Instead, I think it’s important to listen; regardless of how unmannerly some might be – it still provides input.

Finally, I think many commentors, in my opinion, might be are dancing around a main issue. Yes, there is the opportunity to change up the layout (there’s always opportunity to change – that never goes away). But where I thing Elegant Themes can win in this industry to to enhance the FUNCTIONALITY of the themes. What does that mean? Well…

Business themes do business things (like billing, proposal approval, etc.)

Wait… I’m confused. The control panel lets you use any font you want? That was one of my queries (I want to up the size of the font in many of the themes) and was told that wasn’t an option? Because that’s all that’s holding me back from joining…

elegantthemes always changing and follow the trends, try to observe the themes from the beginning (bluesky) to the most recent (Boutique). It completely different ! isn’t it ? If we wanted a theme that is completely different in an instant, I guess it’s not good for Et itself. Try to be patient, over time, the ET will be able to provide themes that we want 😉

1.) I too recognize that the recent themes seem to follow a similar style/pattern/format (or whatever you want to call it).

2.) Trends are trend…blah blah blah.

3.) Nick, from me to you, I understand where you are coming from in your frustration…some people are never happy, however, maybe you should’ve pointed out my next point, instead of getting frustrated.

4.) While some of these latest themes follow a similar style, Elegant themes has a phenominal support team which can advise you on how to modify the hell out of your themes so that in the end, they look almost nothing like the demo itself. So if you like some of the structure of a theme, simply modify the parts you dislike and make it your own. I’ve only been working on websites for a year, and even I can grasp how to modify the hell out of a site to make it unique…which, truth be told, if you are selling “Web Design” and using a template…YOU SHOULD BE DOING THAT ANYWAY….especially if you are charging $1,000 and more to your client. BECAUSE YOUR CLIENT DOESN’T WANT A WEBSITE THAT JUST CAME OUT OF THE BOX….THEY ARE PAYING FOR SOME DESIGN ON YOUR PART ANYHOW!!!!

I’m also looking foraward to older theme updates, such as eStore. Have clients who don’t like Boutique as much as eStore, but had issues with the cart plugins in the past not integrating smoothly. They’re getting excited to have eStore back on the table!!! Thanks ET.

I love the theme but the epanel stuff has GOT to change. It’s ludicrous that if I change themes I can’t save nav states or any other settings from it.

Also the epanel needs to be pushed into being a plugin so it can be updated more easily than copying the whole thing into the folders each time. That might work fine for single sites but trying to update all of my client sites to run the newest version of epanel isn’t elegant.

Also lately some of the shortcodes have been extremely poorly written (testimonials especially) and cause issues with browsers and wordpress plugins. This is likely caused on ET’s growth being so huge but is something that will be detrimental to your business if you don’t update the backend coding standards you use.

Many of us commenting have already given you money, and are sharing our thoughts with you because we’re fans. The worst thing ANY business can do is assume they can ignore feedback. Feedback isn’t only “what do you want now for themes,” but a great way to find out what your fans think you can do better. Make no mistake: right now fans are telling you to fix your business, they quickly turn into ex-customers if you ignore them the way you do.

Just some friendly advice from someone who has tread this ground before.

With regards finally to this theme, I like it though I’m not sure how it is that different from theProfessional theme aside from the main image? I suppose that feeling will change once the theme is released. Looking forward to it dropping soon 😀

We will certainly make more/different themes in the future. We created this business theme because it’s what our customers voted for directly. Our most popular themes are simple CMS-style designs, and we will continue to produce these as long as they are in demand from our customers.

That being said, we always mix in some unique themes as well. Just look back at our theme release history and you will notice a health variety of niche themes such as Boutique, InReview, MyCuisine, Envisioned, Anticipate, etc.

Every time we release a new theme we get complaints, and each time I give the same answer. We can’t please everyone with each theme, which is why we continue to produce a balance of general purpose/niche themes.

dont worry Nick about this.. look to be honest with you the themes are beautiful and also if I need add something or remove something.. Its all in my hands.. so I think complains are not on right place.. I am happy to have you and elegant themes team “in”..you changed my wordpress world also want to say massive big thank you for such great job.

I think that a website focused on mobile devices would be a great addition, for personal use (blog, personal site) as well as for e-shops. This site could have different modes for tablet-sized devices as well as smartphone screens.

Hi Nick, don’t worry about those who don’t like this theme. PLEASE don’t remove the panel. This feature is a MUST on every theme you offer. The flexibility with font, color & texture this panel offers is amazing – and you can’t kill this feature just because of a few – who don’t know to customize your designs.

To bring variety, try bringing in mobile optimized themes(see Twenty10 – one theme which works on desktop, iPad or mobile), and cater to one business segment – hotels, clinics, eshopping, real estate…

ePanel update would be better as a plugin. 😉 As “Chris O’Rourke” rightfully suggested, the current method is not elegant – So this is a great opportunity for Elegant Themes (not to mention the added exposure (because of adding it to the WP plugin repository).

Within the confines of WordPress, these are fine. What’s great is that you keep adding more hooks and give the user more options to include or not include the modules. Aggregate was a huge step in that direction and makes the theme pretty modifiable. Hopefully you’ll carry that model forward.

for me the options for different video and audio file typesfor me the options for different video and audio file types are important for me and the others im sure. but i cannot see that shortcode options in elegantthemes. Im thinking why they are notmaking them ?

It’s hard to find music-related themes.. even in WP.org I think it would be a great addition, with some video and audio plug-ins.. STELLAR!! And yes, I too love that you are now including more user mods to these themes, like fonts, backgrounds, etc. It’s getting easier to really take an ET as a starting point and make it our own.

I hear what some are saying about wanting to see something different and can’t say I totally disagree. If you want some fresh ideas, you could always hold a design contest or a suggestion box… wanting to see more variety is not uncommon.. even some awesome songwriters who write #1 hits end up sounding the same by the second album. it’s not an insult and we dont want to go anywhere where, ok? We love ETs…

I know you had a poll to ask what kind of themes people wanted (I voted!) but it didn’t ask us anything related to style, design, features, functions or customizatons. But hey, whether you are open to hearing ideas and feedback or not is totally up to you but from a business persective, it really is in your best interest to at least consider some ideas that float across your desk. Afterall, we are your buying customers and we want to stay with ET.
Keep up the great work Nick.
Peace
Sally & Mike

Great suggestion Patrico! Event Espresso compatibility would be a perfect compliment for such a theme. Nick and his team are definitely leading the WP industry as far as cost, quality, style, and technical innovation. I am looking forward to the ePanel and e-commerce theme updates.

I’m a big fan and have been for a long while. I always look at the themes and enjoy them for what they are but never loose site of how I can use them for my purpose. Basically, it’s not what it is, it’s what it can be. Keep up the good work nick, still the best site on the web for WP themes and happy to be a member.

what a miracle again for a business theme, you can also still something else?

one thing is certain, if you continue to confine only to business-themes I will not be renewing my account. Quite apart from the style of theme to theme looks nearly always the same, poor performance, does not testify of creativity…

Hey Ronny, instead of being sarcastic and post dumb comments, maybe you better spend some time working on your own site and use a decent theme… it makes you look rather stupid to post critique if your own work is looking like shit.

If it goes then the next theme would probably be a magazine or theme?
@ Ronny
I’m not a pro and I managed to find my real website. And it would give here a theme which would correspond to my wishes, I would use it. In addition, you should practice once in politeness.

awesome any chance you guys are gonna make a really clean realestate version or something like it for artist and architects i ripped apart the elegant estate to make this for a client friend http://www.saftarchitecture.com not exactally what i wanted but it was gonna have to do for the moment

I’m actually super excited about this theme. I work in web development and too many companies are trying to push the envelope of design too far. Sometimes simple & elegant is best! I really appreciate and admire the work you do and for one, am very excited about the new theme – it’s just what I was looking for, for one of my own blogs!

I’ve only used one theme thus far, Nova. I’d love to use My Cuisine and a couple of others.

The need for different design perspectives is real, and simply suggesting they go elsewhere may not be the best strategy. I would advise finding a way to put additional designers in the mix, probably through a second tier membership.

IMHO, a bit of variety is due here but, more importantly, an easy way to automatically make each site work for mobile devices — and all that this means. Mobile is exploding and everybody’s site(s) must play right on both Apple and Android phones.

Not so much ‘clean’, sadly sort of Anaemic.
I use your services for something I couldn’t do or get elsewhere.
Maybe the previous theme, tired everyone out.
That said I would rather be using you than looking for someone else, Loyalty still stands for something with me, suggesting to go elsewhere I found a bit unnecessary, after all you are inviting comments. Look forward to a real head spinner next time.
Many thanks for all your efforts

I didn’t mean to be rude, sorry about that. I am just being honest in admitting that my themes will always share a similar style. Of course they will evolve over time, but it’s not realistic for me to say that my style will change overnight. My themes will work great from some and maybe not so much for others, but I do my best to provide a variety of great themes at a great price.

Thank you for replying, and thank you for all your efforts.
We are all entitled to have an off day.
I look forward to some stunning work in the future, your capabilities are the one thing that is never questioned by anyone on this forum, and for us all to ride on the back of that for the fee you charge is great. So, many thanks again and can’t wait for the future releases.

Hey Nick – recent wordpress convert here. I have used a number of your themes in reality as well as having a bit of a play around and with a little tweaking and some inventive imagery each one can look and feel very different. I like your style. I can work with it. So well done, keep up the good work. For 39 bucks you’re a bargain in my opinion. The doubters may need to take some responsibility and up the ante in their own approach to their content and design, or, as you say, check out some other options. Cheers again mate.

I chose Elegant Themes BECAUSE much of the work follows the same structure. It happens to be the basic structure we’re using to develop quite a few sites, but the variations on the same theme give me ready options to inexpensively match client branding.

As I have read all your comments I have a few things to point at:
1. ET provide over time with best quality designs, great support
2. ET themes are the most variety you can find on the web (don’t forget there is only one man who make the design)
3. the price is the lowest in the market if you thing what you will get for a 39 usd / year
4. All other vendors have much higher prices and the layout is the same
5. ET have a very high theme release / month then other vendors.

So I think ET still remains the best choice when choosing what Vendor you should choose. Cheers and Nick keep up the stunning work you do!!!

I don’t know…I see what some of you are saying about the themes having the same basic look and feel to them, but really, ET is ONE resource.
You can always shop around and buy a different type of theme at ThemeForest. But for $39 a year, I don’t see much to bitch about here.
And this type of biz theme is EXACTLY the biz theme I was hoping for…simple and to-the-point type of theme for business, without it looking like a sales page.
Plus for me, the value of ET themes is in the admin and extra features ET continues to add. Really cool stuff imo, and I have been a member for about 2 years now, when before a lot of these features were not present.
True, Nick did more unusual designs then – the Deviant theme comes to mind most prominently; egamer and others – but most of those themes don’t really look “professional”…they just look interesting.
With the Web changing constantly, these latest additions have a professional look and feel to them that other themes on the market just don’t have.
So hire a coder and make some changes if you want. That’s my advise. But God, for $39 a year? quit whining, pleeeeeeaaaaaase.

I do think that no one here is “complaining” – its sort of suggestions. While ET is so far the lowest price vendor and one of the best support and design team, we are here to provide opinions, suggestions, to even make ET better, non-beatable. I do believe most of us are fan to ET so please take the suggestions as suggestions, do not get em wrong as “complaints”.

And Nick, I do feel the CSS control panel is cool, please do not take it away. What we are saying is about… e.g. the Box Style, background shadows of the content area,etc., and my other suggestion is about the sidebar style too.

Thanks again, Nick, I really did and will always support ET. Please don’t get me wrong.

OK all, I’ll have to make my statement then too. I think Nick does a wonderful job, and keeps up with the times.

As a long time graphic designer, I can say this; some of these new themes that many of you are complaining about is a perfect clean palette to work with and do whatever you wish with. Making it look truly unique is totally up to you in Photoshop and Illustrator. If you know these tools well, you’ll find plenty of options. If you rely heavily on what is built in under the hood, at worst then you have a very clean and tidy looking site. Starting with a really graphically complex template is a total pain, because if you want to really customize it, it can require a lot of nitpicking to make it look good.

Nicks support is well above par, and I’ve found it so easy to get any answer I need in less than 24 hours. Not many companies who charge 2 and 3 times as much can say that. And yes, I do speak from experience…..in the Joomla realm as well.

I’ve spent enough money on various services like this. And this is by far the most I’ve ever gotten for my money. $39.00 + a one time only developers license? C’mon…what’s to complain about?!

I love your clean designs and that’s why I signed for your service. I also was one of the users who voted for a business theme last month, but to be honest, this is not the business design I had in mind. I think that’s part of the reason why some users are disappointed.

Personally, I would like to see a more compact design – a theme that can fit a lot of information on the front page that is mostly non-images and still look fantastic. I think a good compact design needs to have the following:

— Menu Bars —
Thin bars that do not take up a lot of vertical screen real estate. Main bar across the screen with secondary optional bar under it. Another bar on upper right hand corner and one on the bottom.

— More than two columns, possibly adjustable width–
Three or four column design with one thin column one each side (Theme magnificent is the only one with that right now). If the middle section is width adjustable, that’s big plus.

— Small Margins —
No need for the site name or logo or menu bar or a slider to take up a lot of screen real estate. I couldn’t find a single ET theme that fit this.

I think close examples of the above layout are store.apple.com and amazon.com (except for the secondary optional menu bar).

Of course I know what I want is not necessarily what other users are looking for and it would make more sense for you to make something more users wanted than the select few. Maybe we can have another vote? This time, let’s break down the business category and have sample sites? I think many of us had different designs in mind when we voted ‘Business’.

I agree – But also, it needs to do something business related! (Not just look good). FreeLanceFolder (.com) created a theme called “The Client Machine” – It looked VERY old fashioned and had some useless graphics elements. But…

The knocked the business functionality out of the ballpark – Great job! What did they do?…

!!???? I thought I read somewhere that you were removing the CSS control panel??!!! Please don’t!!! This helps individuals to vary and or semi customize the theme!!! 39-dollars for a subscription is amazing. I honestly can’t complain. That’s only 3.25 a month with the ability to switch your theme whenever you feel like. It’s inexpensive and the designs a so very polished! It’s my personal opinion that if people are not content…then they can pay the extra to either have someone customize their theme…or pay several hundred or more for a different theme from some of the more expensive web theme sites.

PLEASE…don’t remove the CSS panel options ability. Perhaps keep it in as an option within the themes?!!

A good business theme is something that actually does something to support the business and clients. For example, invoicing, quotation approval, etc. FreeLanceFolder.com did a theme like this – And it’s incredibly functional!

I like the new layout you did – It looks super professional – VERY nice job.

I just hope, as a business theme, that it’s not going to be just another pretty theme, but rather DO SOMETHING business related.

The themes come with specific functions like the examples you’ve mentioned are purpose-aimed theme such as a Music Theme that come with a media player. For most of the features you mentioned are available in some Free and Commercial plug-ins that can certainly be installed and running in any WP theme.

Other sites are having these features included (billing, proposal approval, etc.), so it’s perhaps a good idea for Elegant Themes to take the industry lead and provide themes that do these things.

I also notice that when WP businesses produce a good, professional theme, that uses a plugin, they customize the graphic elements so that it appears seamless to the end user.

I truly believe that when producing themes, a business cannot focus 100% on design only. Rather there needs to be a balance between design and development. – And I’ve been working in this arena for a couple of decades at least.

I somewhat agree on your points. Just, I think that a theme is a theme, like a cloth you put on your body, and the function of the whole is about yourself, the body (WordPress). You have to go study some accounting principles (plug-in) to perform basic accounting functions, and to learn more (another advance plug-in) to make yourself an accountant.

I understand some commercial themes came with some special features including what you’ve mentioned, what they did is integrate some “plug-in” into the theme and style the “plug-in” elements the same as the theme.

That sounds good right?! However, the plugin they integrated suits you but not John Doe, then you know what? John couldn’t customize it as he is not a coder.

AND, those special featured themes providers do not charge you $39 and give the whole year membership, and 2 additional themes every month.

I feel that you missed the point in what I was saying. And it seems like you’re getting frustrated, but the truth is you’re really receiving a lot of compliments here.

People are saying they’re very happy with the service (me included).

In fact, the “complaints” you’re getting are a very good sign. It shows people care enough about this service that they voice their opinion about it. When people don’t care about something, they have no motive to voice anything.

Bravo for creating a community here that’s passionate about you and your service. That’s a feat in itself.

I see what you’re saying about fonts and backgrounds. I guess I misspoke about those, as you’re right. There’s a standard list of fonts you can choose from, and that’s great.

Someone above, Kevin, said best what I was trying to say: “…the structure and all looks pretty common across the board… just with different clothes on.”

That’s all man! Take it or leave it, that’s what me and some others are saying. It’s not a big enough deal to cancel my service over – but just slightly big enough for me and others to voice our concerns, and see if we can get a change in the mix.

Hopefully this sheds a better light on things. Thank you for this awesome service, and all that you and your team do. For the price, this is friggin’ awesome.

And since I’m grandfathered into an even better rate than what you currently have, I truly am grateful 😉 I apologize if that didn’t come off in my earlier comment, but I felt it important to say what I had to say.

I replied above but I seem to be of a different view of most people posting here, but I’m prepared to take the bashing which will undoubtedly come as a result

I actually really like the control panel and believe my business and team use it in exactly the way Nick intended. For example, because of how easy everything is to customise we were able to pull this design together in just 2 hours using the Feather theme:http://artifex-design.co.uk/juicedorange/

We are really happy with it, as is the client and it’s just how we saw working with the Elegant Themes…themes, to be.

What I would actually encourage is DEVELOPMENT of the control panel to add more options and make it really powerful.

My business attended an open event 4 weeks ago and we got the few themes up live at the event on our stand, all of them had the control panel. All the people who dropped by our stand loved it as we were able to show them on the spot how themes can look very different with just a few changes – we sold many websites on the day purely because of this feature.

Well done Nick, love your work and the community too – this debate is great for pushing things forward

I agree too. My clients love the ePanel and two that are VERY savvy asked if it could be made as a plugin instead (because there are a lot of CSS edits that are not a child theme – so would be lost if the theme was updated for ePanel) – that really suprised me as I never expected that kind of input, they might have read that on some comments here (I know I mentioned it).

With respect to the design elements… Yup well done. Clean modern and not too much “fluff”. The graphic elements naturally lead the viewers eye to the content – That is one aspect of good design!! And nick does a professional job here.

I hope more functions are available. For example we’ve got ecommerce related, video related and so on. They have some functionality especially for what they do. I just hope that this trend continues mobile theme for just mobile devices, business them that does business things (gee, have I suggested this enough times? Hee hee hee…, maybe an electronic document management theme, and so on. Stuff like that.

I think everyone is basically on the same page – love Nick’s work and the time and effort he puts into his themes. There’s a lot of great constructive criticism in this thread and I’m sure Nick is going to address these while realizing the people making the constructive criticisms are fans of his too. In the end, it’s a win-win situation.

Elegant themes was the place where it really all started for me,in taking me on a journey with WordPress. I read the comments, and yes I have a few gripes too, don’t we all. And it is is okay to give ‘constructive’ feedback, good or bad. The balance appears to be on the side of good, so the themes must be okay. The support I’ve had, has always been timely and always helpful. That surely means a lot!
But one thing that did concern me, is the comment that the epanels going!
Im sure I read a post somewhere (maybe from Nick, but don’t quote me (-: that the epanel was going to be improved. Conflicting statements it appears. I really do hope the epanel is staying. One of the main reasons I use Elegant,canvas and striking themes are being able to customize………enough said.

I can only imagine your frustration… You add a feature to make customizing your themes as easy as clicking a buttons and then people complain how they look too similar. How you deal with it… I don’t know.

Anyway my suggestion is, since I know a lot of people (including myself) love the CSS panel and understand how to use it and its benefits, create another poll with two options; for or against the CSS panel.

This way we, the members, can be responsible for the choice of keeping it or 86ing it… and if it does actually get voted off, you can just keep it on anyway 😉

While it looks like a good start to a theme, id like to throw in a few things:

For the most part, i have stopped using elegantthemes for my business websites, simply because as im trying to sell a product or service, a majority of the themes lack call to actions, have huge sliders that take up half an entire widescreen monitor on 1920×1080 and allow for links on parts you don’t want people to click on; such as icons or thumbnails on the main page (which are purely there for asthetics, not so someone can click them to see a bigger version of it).

This is a layout i would recommend:

HEADER
NAVBAR
SLIDER – supports text, video, image, buttons, call to actions etc
CALLTOACTION – optional spot for a cta
SERVICES – you guys have always done this fine
POSTAREA – so we can add an article under as it greatly helps with seo etc.
FOOTER – always been there and it fine

There just needs to be more options for call to actions, logical links and so on. As well as trying to ensure the themes are lightweight as possible for performance.

You really make great themes Nick, they are easy to modify and work with (so easy i give forum support sometimes for others less knowledgable) and they look great.

As everyone else has said, you do get a ‘samey’ feel, however for me i don’t care of that, you make wonderous looking themes, i just want the functionality of said above, because a true business / ecommerce theme has that and without it, your bounce rates and user attention can drop alot.

Have to admit, I agree with a lot of comments in the above. The work at Elegant Themes is great, but some variety now and again would be fantastic. I haven’t renewed my membership, which ran out recently, as I just wasn’t using any of the new themes. I, and others, had posted in the requests thread in the forum, asking for more newsy or sports type themes, something more basic, without the fancy fonts and large scale design, but with the elegant themes touches, but nothing ever came of them. Instead, we get more of the large scale designs, with the sliders or large header area which take up most of a screen rather than just something a bit simpler and less in your face.

I keep checking back to see if anything like that comes up, but no luck so far.

You could have a developers corner where members could showcase their modified themes to sell to other members. The modified themes would be customizations based on style, layout and functionality and would be appealing and useful to other members who may not be as skilled in performing these customizations. You could work it out where members who submit works for additional sale would share revenue with you. I would say you are one of the top five places for WP themes on the web considering the quality, quantity and price that you offer. How could anyone complain about what you put out considering that, who knows? But with this idea of a developers corner I think would enhance your business, reduce comments from people possibly expecting to much as well as catering to them by offering them additional modifications in style, layout and functionality being taken care of a second tier of developer/designers who are already your members! Question is, would this idea be useful to you and would there be enough interest from the members who adept with theme modifications to make this work? I think what you do is already brilliant and second to none. If I were to have a suggestion, I would suggest dropping any “seo” functionality found in the epanel because I think the core code would be cleaner and there are already a few really good seo plugins that take care of everything to begin with. Keep up the fantastic work Nick, you offer great themes with incredible value beyond reproach! Just my two cents.

Nick, wish you made some bolder themes. Simpler looking. Everything is too glamorous and complex. For example if I wanted to create a skateboarding or a blog about my favorite sports team the themes are just too elegant and sophisticated looking.

Here are some example sites of what I would love to see you recreate with your own style.

Nick, you guys have the best designs on the best platform (WordPress) – IMHO. I love the powerful variety of Event, Review and Ask It. Is it possible to create a single theme that encompasses Event, Ask It, Review and add integration with a Membership Plugin like s2Member all in one single theme? Ideally, I think all of these features are ideal for a Business Theme. These items, combined with Epanel and your designs are sure to be a home run. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks Nick for another great job. I saw some people are unhappy with a similar looking themes coming out lately. No matter what you do you will not make everyone happy. Just keep pushing ahead with innovative designs and options. Looking back at some of your portfolio here, you can see how your layouts and designs have evolved. There are sets that look very similar. It’s all part of the creative process. keep up the good work!

Yes, Dorelies… Social Media is HUGE… It would be awesome if the themes had the option for LARGE buttons to “Like” me on Facebook, & “Follow” me on Twitter, Watch me on YouTube and possibly other social sites. – – This is the future of web activity. Social media is where the conversation is, & it’s where the people are. Websites need to be more social site friendly.

Lean Biz is terrific option. As for this back and forth on whether Nick’s designs should evolve – that concept is similar to choosing an artist whose work you feel drawn to and want to collect. You always see artists’ “points of view” and he/she’s not going to change because you’d like a different look. Nick’s POV is in these designs, as it should be. Nick’s a web design “artist” so if you are not as enthusiastic as you once were, perhaps you should add someone else’s themes to your collection and see how well they work for you, if their customer service comes anywhere near the level Nick and his team provide, and if you find as helpful a forum. Want ET customization? Search ET forum, elance or DIY. ET over delivers on value in its pricing $39 a year!, theme versatility and has no peer in customer service. The bucks ET saves us all, it’s affordable to try something else. As for me, I’m a very grateful and satisfied customer. And love all in the ET community!

Think with this though is, if the look isn’t going to change, why ask for requests on what you want? I don’t get this reasoning that customers are asked what they’d like to see, they do that and then, when nothing new happens, people tell them, basically, if you don’t like it go somewhere else. As I said, why then ask for requests in the first place?

I have got hold of an alternative theme, and am very happy with it. However, it would be nice to see something new from ET, as Nick does do a fantastic job and the themes options are great, but it would be nice to see a change of format once in a while.

I LOVE the control panel. I LOVE the art & design of these sites ~ and I’m an artist & web designer myself. I just don’t have time to design a site from scratch for each client … therefor, I give many thanks to ET!!!

Also, hoping the request for future site structure to include a heavy dose of Social Site friendly designs, Large buttons to Feature a “link” to the site owner’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social sites.

People are learning that a ‘website’ is going to reflect what I want people to know about me… however, my social sites will show what Other people think & say about me… which is a critical portion of winning over new customers.

Fingers crossed for keeping control panel for easy color & font changes… and Big Big addition of more social site friendly stuff on the next web template… I don’t know what that means, don’t know how to explain what the entails, just know that it’s important. Thx ET for Everything!!!!! LOVE IT!